Every Goan has a sense of Goa and Goan-ness. It is completely different from those visitors, laborers or other settlers. It is through this sensing of Goa that Goans goanize themselves as well as Goa. Others may sense the pulse this Goan way of sensing their lives. Goa belongs to the matrix of life of Goans and it informs the way a Goan conducts his or her life. Thus, Goans stive to space-out possibilities of being in human in Goa. Of late, Goans have acutely come to feel that Goa as a matrix of life and being of Goans is steadily waning away. Goa seems to be disappearing and Goans are already sensing this dark future. One can feel the pulse of this sense in the way resistance is shaping among Goans to save Goa and Goan-ness. Goa is vulnerable and is in danger of metamorphosis beyond redemption. Hence, Goans are fighting degoanizing forces working in Goa.
Goans are questioning the loss of village character of their villages. Several mega projects and settlements are threatening to displace Goans politically, culturally and even religiously for sometime now. Goans have raised up the ante of resistance to this invasion of vested interest that has led to the erosion and erasure of Goan culture. The resistance growing around the mega project is the village in Sancoale cannot, therefore, be viewed in isolation. It does raise the issues of the future of Goa, Goans and Goan-ness in a profoundly acute manner.
To understand and sense Goan resentment and resistance, we may have to understand what is called settler aesthetics. This might enable us to sense how the forces and the powers that benefit from the sale of Goa feed into settler aesthetics. This settler aesthetics is trying to sell Goa as a site where one can own a second home away from home as well as it also attempts to promote it as a place for peaceful retirement for the old.
The imaginary of Goa manufactured and sustained by the reining tourism industry has brought in if I may call ‘ the second colonization’ of Goa. Hence, it has become difficult to think of an alternate future alongside the growing aesthetic attraction of the non-Goan to Goa. The aesthetic tastes of the non-Goans conflict with the Goans natives at several levels. This means the settler aesthetics and the native aesthetics do not seem to meet. It is the enduring sense of fidelity of Goans to Goa and Goan-ness that has brought several Goans on the street in protest against the thereat of elimination and erasure of Goa.
Here, I do not wish to monolithize or singularize the aesthetics that seems to attract non-Goans to Goa. It is rather an ensemble of aesthetic orientations that are sensed and felt by Goans as going against their interests. The situation is aggravated as the law and spatial technologies of zoning , mapping and settlement regulations are often suspended to those who are willing to pay. Very often, therefore, the law that regulates settlements appears to be only meant for Goans and not for others. This condition seems to propagate that Goa is a Terra nullius / empty land awaiting for the highest bidder to exploit. Goans, thus, not only feel the loss of land but also feel being stripped of Goan-ness and face other forms of specifically Goan aesthetic erasure.
Goan aesthetics is thus, in conflict with the settler aesthetics that is being reproduced through hegemonic representation practices that project Goa to the outside world. This representation of Goa thrives on the production of Goa as an exotic place that shapes the desire to belong to Goa among the tourists produce high paying prospective settlers. This condition accentuates Goa as an empty place projecting it as available for settlement while literally invisiblizing Goan stake-holders. Goa has, thus, simultaneously evolved as a site of life in abundance for some and a site of struggle for Goans.
This is why Goans may be continuously disputing and contesting the imaginary of the settler or visitor. Goa is beautiful and produces different atheistic orientations in everyone. But within these aesthetic orientations there also rides a desire to own a piece of Goa. It is this aesthetics that informs the ways people feel their being in Goa. It is this feeling of being in Goa that triggers a desire to own a piece of land becomes the aesthetics that drives the sale of Goa. This is why the builders lobby and others interested are trying to make hay while the sun is shining on Goa. Unfortunately, the sun that is sensed as shining those who use Goa as raw material to amass wealth is felt as setting by Goans.
Goans welcome everyone but would want people to visit Goa without fixing one’s bond that desire to own their land. This is because Goan identity is deeply intertwined to the land of Goa. Goans inhabit Goa and have their life and being within it. We may take a Goan out of Goa but will never be able to take Goa out of a Goan. Goans have deep and intimate sensibilities to Goa, to other fellow Goans and to all things Goan. Goans live, breathe and feel Goa intimately. It is this intimacy with Goa and Goan-ness that inform the unique Goan aesthetics or Goan sense of Goa and Goan-ness . Thanks to the activists, Goan resistance to the erasure and possible elimination of Goa is visiblized in Goan society. The Government appears to have chosen its side. The side that the Government has chosen does not seem to be the side of Goans. Goans can sense it and hence, one may be able to sense a discontent among Goans. Goan’s , therefore, have to unite. Goans will not lose anything by uniting. By uniting for Goa, Goans can only save Goa.
